OWC Thunderbolt 2 Dock Review

OWC’s new Thunderbolt 2 Dock might just be the tool you didn’t know your studio needed. With more and more Macs coming less and less equipped with i/o ports, adding an additional HD monitor, external hard drives, USB-based MIDI gear and more can become a huge headache. Enter the Thunderbolt 2 – taking advantage of the new(ish) Thunderbolt interface found on most Macs, the dock seamlessly adds a ton of new ports to your studio rig.

Better yet, its sleek design fits well in any studio décor, and can pretty much disappear with its relatively small footprint. The Thunderbolt 2 Dock can handle 20Gb/s of throughput, which means no latency or data clogs (no-no’s when time is money in the studio). It also features the ability to daisy-chain another 5 Thunderbolt devices – so expandability is definitely the name of the game here. Plus, all the USB 3.0 ports offer power, eliminating a ton of cables, and the dock itself connects to your computer with one simple Thunderbolt cable.

Honestly, we didn’t think going into this review that the OWC dock would be such an indispensable tool for the home studio user or commercial recording space, but with the amount of gear and peripherals we all accumulate (yeah, I’m looking at you, gear hoarders and multiple-monitor junkies), it’s actually become a pretty essential component to our own office project studio.

The street price is in the $200 range, so it’s not a huge investment, but it will allow for an enormous upgrade in your connectivity capabilities. Which means, you guessed it, you can justify buying more stuff!

OWC Thunderbolt 2 Dock Front View

PROS:

Rugged design, great expandability for recording pros and home users.

CONS:

Mac only.

PRICE:

$219

OWC Thunderbolt 2 Dock Features

-Five USB 3.0 ports including two side-facing, high-powered USB 3.0 ports.-Support for resolutions up to 4K via HDMI 1.4b-Full-speed Gigabit Ethernet port that requires no configuration.-Connect a microphone or any other line-in audio source.